Lopetegui: “I’m sad because I was excited, but it’s one thing to be sad and another to be weak”

MADRID, 1 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Sevilla FC coach, Julen Lopetegui, acknowledged that he is “sad” after the defeat against Atlético de Madrid at the Sánchez-Pizjuán (0-2), but that “one thing is to be sad and the other is to be weak”, so he does not believe that the club can dismiss him after reaping a new bad result.

“I am sad today, because I was excited, but one thing is to be sad and the other is to be weak. We have to be calm knowing that what is going to happen between now and the end of the season depends on us,” Lopetegui declared in the post-crash press conference.

On a possible dismissal, Lopetegui was clear. “I’m not thinking about any of that, I’m thinking about recovering the players mentally, helping them to balance their heads well and preparing for the match that we have to play,” he said.

The Basque assured that they have “a margin for improvement”, but that they need “self-criticism, the coach first”, in order to “be able to turn this situation around”.

Regarding the poor planning of the squad as a cause of the bad start, the coach did not want to “enter into assessing that scenario”, but for him “the important thing is those who are there”, those who must “take care of them and strengthen them”.

“The idea was to have a first half where we were able to do a little more damage to Atlético de Madrid. We knew it was a game of details, where any minimum mistake is a team that punishes you, very strong in both areas, and in the first part, within not having much clarity, they weren’t having situations either”, analyzed Lopetegui.

The Basque coach stated that “any move could unbalance” the match, and that “it was the throw-in prior to Karim (Rekik)’s injury”, where they conceded Marcos Llorente’s goal, which they could “have avoided, without any doubt”.

Lopetegui thinks that in the second part they have “changed things” and “executed other types of situations”. “We lacked a bit of clarity and calm in the final stretch of the game, but we were above Atlético de Madrid, but it is a team that is capable of coexisting very naturally in those moments where it is dominated,” he explained. .

In addition, he also explained the second goal, where he says that they could “have defended better.” “A very big punishment came to us with the 0-2, because they weren’t getting there in any way and the feeling we had was that we were on the right track. It upsets everything, the changes are surely more of an open grave, the control is not exists and in that scenario the transitions are very dangerous”, he valued.

“In a scenario of a lot of work where you have to row against the current, we were doing it, but I think that second goal came at a time when we were being better. But being better or not is valued in the areas and there we don’t we have done and with the 0-2 the whole party has gone”, commented.

For Sevilla, according to their coach, what they lacked to enter the game was “a bit of calm and good decisions in the final stretch”, and he believes that his rival takes “three well-deserved points”. “The situation of the team is not what we have, without a doubt, we want to be higher and I am sure that the team will end up turning the situation around, there is a lot of season left”, he affirmed.

“The more games you stop adding, the more complicated it is, but we still have a lot of time ahead of us in that aspect. From then on, no matter how long there is, in football the rush and urgencies are always present and we, like Sevilla, we want to win all the matches and now we will focus on the Champions League”, he declared.

At the start of the season, Lopetegui detects that his team is at a time when they are not “successful in the final stages of the game” and that this match “does not have much to do with the previous ones”. “Against Barcelona we had many more clear goalscoring situations, today they didn’t exist, we dominated but we haven’t been able to generate scoring situations,” he added.